payment page
Summary
Chapter 21: I Like Standing On My Own Two Feet, But Getting Swept Off Them Feels Surprisingly Good Too
Grace is embarrassed about being carried, but Jaxon barely seems to feel her weight. She protests the whole way back, but is secretly enjoying being held, and thinks Jaxon smells very appealing, “like snow and orange.” Macy, who is walking with them, is visibly uncomfortable with Jaxon’s presence. When they reach the castle, Jaxon deposits Grace in her bed and carefully examines her ankle, suspecting a sprain. Despite her discomfort with the situation, Grace can't deny that his touch feels good. Macy proffers a hot pink Ace bandage, and Jaxon wraps her foot. Again, there’s intense sexual tension, and Jaxon warns Grace explicitly that she should stay as far away from Flint as possible. Then he leaves the room, leaving Grace in a familiar state of frustration.
Chapter 22: Baby It’s Hot In Here…
In her room, Grace ponders her complex feelings towards Jaxon, comparing him to her only other previous boyfriend, Gabe. Macy joins her, absolutely desperate to discuss the fact that “the two most popular boys in school are obsessed” with her. Macy comments on both Jaxon and Flint’s unusually different demeanor around Grace, and admits she’s softening slightly toward Jaxon. Grace tries to explain her tangled feelings about Jaxon, but can’t put them into words effectively. Her friend Hannah from San Diego texts her, and Grace responds, but Macy refuses to end their conversation. She asks Grace directly if she likes Jaxon, and Grace unwittingly admits that she does after some clever probing. Macy reassures her that they can trust each other.
Chapter 23: Never Bring An Ice Cream Scoop To A Gun Fight
Macy warns Grace that she can’t be friends with both Jaxon and Flint, due to the existing tensions at Katmere. She still doesn’t explain why the groups there are so separated, but warns Grace that it’s an unchangeable fact. Grace listens carefully, but still can’t accept the idea that she’ll have to decide between Flint and Jaxon. She eventually falls asleep.
Chapter 24: Waffles Are the Way to a Girl’s Everything
Grace receives an unexpected series of flirtatious text messages from Jaxon, which are followed up with an enormous breakfast delivery to her room. She’s very touched by the gesture, and she texts Jaxon to thank him, asking him what he likes to eat. He takes his time responding and tells her that he doesn’t think it’s the time to discuss that. Grace is bewildered but amused.
Chapter 25: Truly Madly Deeply Bitten
Jaxon and Grace continue to text, their messages rapidly getting more intimate as the rapport between them builds. Macy returns to their room and is also shocked and delighted by the breakfast delivery, telling Grace that Jaxon must have made a special effort to get some of the more unusual items on the tray. She hands Grace another delivery with an attached note, which is also from Jaxon. It’s a library copy of Twilight, and the note is just a quotation from Edward Cullen: “I said that it would be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t want to be.” Grace texts him again to thank him, and he pays a visit to her room. He massages her sprained ankle, and shares a few scattered personal details about his family, before handing Grace another enigmatic note and making his signature abrupt exit.
Analysis
There are a lot of complex feeling at play when Jaxon forcibly picks Grace up and brings her inside the castle. Grace is accustomed to thinking of herself as an independent, autonomous person, and so being bodily wrapped up and carried like a child makes her feel frustrated. Jaxon carrying her here is a literal version of the metaphorical state of their relationship: Grace has no autonomy, it only advances as far as Jaxon is willing to go, and at any point he could unceremoniously drop her and disappear. Despite this, Grace also can’t deny how attracted she is to almost every aspect of Jaxon She likes how strong he feels, and even observes that he smells intoxicatingly good. She struggles to reconcile her growing desire for him with the fear and uncertainty that he always brings up in her. He confuses her even further when he tenderly deposits her on her bed and wraps her foot in a hot-pink Ace bandage. Macy, who’s unused to seeing Jaxon doing anything kind for another person, is just as nonplussed as Grace. Here, and in other relationships in this section, everyone seems to be warily watching everybody else.
Jaxon’s bodily presence has a tangible, intensely physical effect on Grace. They had their most prolonged period of physical closeness as he carried her inside, and since then both characters have been feeling more of the previous electric sexual tension. Wolff leans into this as Jaxon wraps Grace’s ankle: he makes her “want to press [her] face into the curve of his neck and just breathe him in.” Yet again, however, the tension is broken when Jaxon instructs Grace to stay away from Flint, and she stubbornly tells him she won’t. Jaxon disappears—again—and Grace and Macy are left to deconstruct his bizarre, moody behavior. When Jaxon sends a bedridden Grace an elaborate breakfast and a flurry of text messages the next day, she finally begins to allow herself to believe he might actually have feelings for her. The two text back and forth for hours until he comes to visit her. However, when they’re together in person Grace immediately goes back to only feeling aroused and very frustrated. Their brief, intimate discussion makes her feel hopeful, but Jaxon leaves the room again just when things are beginning to get physically more intense. By this point, it’s starting to feel as though he is intentionally trying to confuse and frustrate her.
Grace has some pleasant interactions in this section with Macy and Heather, a friend from San Diego. These happen one after the other, and tie together her old intimacies in her hometown with her newer ones in Alaska. Macy warns Grace repeatedly that Jaxon is dangerous and unstable, but also begins to relent in her total rejection of the idea of Grace liking him. As Grace tries to brush her off, Heather texts her to ask about her love life, and Grace has a similar (if briefer) exchange with her. Although Grace thinks a great deal about Jaxon when she’s alone, she’s not comfortable processing her emotions about him with others. She feels that their connection is somehow already impossibly deep, that there is “something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in [her].” She keeps telling Macy that she has only been in Alaska for three days, but it almost seems as though Grace is actually trying to remind herself of that fact. Grace is still keeping most of her emotions under a tight leash, especially when she feels like things are happening confusingly fast. Because she can’t guess what Jaxon is up to, she tries to dismiss the possibility that he has an ulterior motive beyond being interested in her romantically. Macy tricks her into admitting that she’s “obsessed” with him, and then informs Grace (in a vague way that’s eerily reminiscent of Jaxon himself) that she will soon have to choose between Jaxon and Flint. This all makes much more sense later in the novel when the vampire/dragon/shifter/witch rivalry is explained, but at this point both the reader and Grace are nonplussed and frustrated at this bizarre statement. Macy’s wishy-washy explanation of the circumstances behind their mutual dislike just makes things worse. Grace goes to sleep annoyed, feeling that every question she asks Macy or Jaxon will just provoke ten more that they won’t answer.
